Fete des Lumieres

On 8 December 1852 Lyon inaugurated a gilded statue of the Virgin Mary on Fourvière hill. A Saône flood had pushed the ceremony back from 8 September, and when the weather cleared that evening, residents put candles in their windows and lit up the city. That date already mattered here: in 1643, under threat of plague, the city's aldermen had vowed to honour the Virgin every year if Lyon was spared. Many Lyonnais still set lumignons, small candles in glass, on their windowsills every 8 December.

The city began lighting its monuments under its Plan Lumière in 1989, ran the first four-night festival around 8 December in 1999, and adopted the name Fête des Lumières in 2000. In 2025 the programme held 23 works across 20 sites, with projections on Saint-Jean cathedral, Place des Terreaux and the Saint-Paul station front, and the festival's first drone show.

Every work is an artwork by a named artist or studio, and the organizer's pages credit each one. Place des Terreaux is the busiest site and takes around a million visitors over the four nights. The Parc de la Tête d'Or works need patience: in 2025 the park took last entries an hour before closing and banned luggage at its gate.